th his head up among his telephone wires, just as
Edith keeps hers in the clouds. I hope some day they will run into each
other so hard that they will crash out ignition sparks and take fire.

As I said, being so interested in Edith and Tolly, and trying to get her
to postpone her visit until he could get the wires up between them both
in a material and a sentimental sense, and also wanting to let Sam and
Peter miss me sadly, I let quite a few days elapse without being in any
of the events out at The Briers. When I did go back I found that things
had happened.

"Where's Peter?" I asked, as Sam came to unload me and a huge bag of
smoke iris that old Mrs. Johnson had given me for my garden. There was
also Byrd's basket from mother, and a pair of small alligators that
daddy had got from Florida for him, having run out of natural animal
inhabitants of the Harpeth Valley.

"Pete's off with the bit in his mouth--haven't seen him for three days,"
answered Sam as he lifted me and swung me way out into the middle of my
own clover-pink bed. It was starred with sweet, white blossoms, having
been treated according to Eph's directions and those of Grandmother
Nelson's book.

"Peter off? Where? What's happened, Sam?" I exclaimed, with astonished
anxiety.

"The play," answered Sam, calmly, as he lit his cob pipe and blew a
ring of smoke. "It hit him in the middle of the night before last, and
he wrote me a note. Mammy grubs him, and I haven't seen him since. I've
paid the Byrd a half interest in the next young that happens to us not
to go down the hill to the shack, and we're all just going on as usual."

"Maybe I'd better not go, either," I said, with awe and sympathy for
Peter fairly dropping from the words as I uttered them.

"Betty," said Sam as he looked at me through a ring of smoke that the
warm wind blew away over our heads, "you run just a little more sense to
the cubic foot of dirt than the average, it seems to me. Come on down
and watch them begin to cut wheat. It is one week ahead of time, so I
can get all the harvesters and not a grain will be lost. They say it'll
run sixty bushels to the acre. Think of that, with only a thirty-six
record to beat in the Valley. It is that Canadian cross. The
Commissioner is down there, and so is your admirer, Chubb. He wastes
many hours riding over here to see you when you are in town on frivolous
pursuits."

"Frivolous!" I echoed as we went up the path back of the house; and on